Composition
It begins in Bb major, before turning to its relative minor G. It soon modulates briefly into C minor, then F major, has a spoken intersection where the bass lies on A, dominant of D minor, the key which the song finally ends in.
Hellfire contains parts of the Confiteor, a Latin prayer of confession used by the Roman Catholic Church. This prayer begins directly after "Heaven's Light" and serves as the introduction to "Hellfire". It also provides counterpoint material throughout the song, whose ending also contains the Kyrie eleison.
The instrumental accompaniment to the song serves as a musical motif that alters in tone depending on the action. As well as some variations heard early on (such as in The Bells of Notre Dame), this motif "informs much of the score that chronologically follows in the film". Reviewer Christian Clemmensen of Filmtracks.com adds that 'Both "Paris Burning' and 'Sanctuary!' explicitly continue the instrumental backdrop and Latin chanting of 'Hellfire,' a sound that becomes more general in 'And He Shall Smite the Wicked.'" Also, "the opening fanfare is also reintroduced at the end of 'Heaven's Light', makes up the melody during the chorus of 'Hellfire', and plays in the instrumental 'Sanctuary!'"
Read more about this topic: Hellfire (song)
Famous quotes containing the word composition:
“Viewed freely, the English language is the accretion and growth of every dialect, race, and range of time, and is both the free and compacted composition of all.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose composition was poured a little alloy of bell-metal. Often, in the repose of my mid-day, there reaches my ears a confused tintinnabulum from without. It is the noise of my contemporaries.”
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“There is singularly nothing that makes a difference a difference in beginning and in the middle and in ending except that each generation has something different at which they are all looking. By this I mean so simply that anybody knows it that composition is the difference which makes each and all of them then different from other generations and this is what makes everything different otherwise they are all alike and everybody knows it because everybody says it.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)